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Description:
This is a grand and sophisticated watercolor by the renowned artist William Widgery (1822-1893). Widgery is a renowned listed artist whose work is detail originated, with fabulous use of color, shade, balance and composition. He is the Father of listed artist Frederick John Widgery. If you are familiar with Widgery’s work then I need not continue but if not I would love to describe this fabulous piece of art. This work done here is exceptional. The detail, balance, use of shadow and naturalistic yet vivid colors are exquisite! The ability to show warmth and intricate detail in a watercolor is difficult and seldom achieved. Widgery’s talent is apparent! If all of that wasn’t enough it is housed in the most sophisticated and elegant carved wood gold gilt frame. The carving is deep and the detail is very fine. Deeply carved florals, scrolls and leaves embrace the full outer edge – leading into a carved interior trim ending with a smooth elegant flat surface that perfectly outlines Widgery’s exceptional piece of art. The composition is of a river running through the woods. There is a man on horseback with another horse in toe on the other end of a rope. Tall trees rise up around the scene balancing the piece perfectly – with a blue sky and mountains in the foreground. The horses are graceful and full of life. It is signed W. Widgery on the left hand side above the bottom corner in the trees along with W. Widgery on the base of the frame in the center. Overall it is in very very good condition. The frame is fabulous! The watercolor too is very good. It is slightly loose from the frame – but only slightly. It is very much intact and it would be very easy and inexpensive to strength the back. Like most watercolors this one is under glass. Overall it measure 48 ½” x 38 ¼” and the sight size is 37” x 27”. I found the following biography on William Widgery in the book Art In Devonshire by George Pycroft (pub. 1881) - “landscape painter in oil and watercolour, born at Uppercot, North Molton, 1822, worked in early life as a mason, and is a capital instance of the truth, that if there is genius in a man, it will come to the surface without any help, and in spite of the most adverse circumstances. He began painting in his leisure hours, and his friends thought much of his performances; but the man who had most influence in determining his future path in life was the late Thomas Hex, of St. Thomas, at whose inn the writer first saw Mr. Widgery's clever reproductions of some of Landseer's works, only known to the painter through the medium of engravings. At Mr. Hex's advice Widgery gave up his trade, and trusted his all to his success as an artist. He painted and sold many copies of Landseer and Rosa Bonheur, made portraits of cattle and horses, and drew scenes from his neighborhood in oil; and although his work at first was of course that of a beginner, the writer and the Dr. W. R. Scott, of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, an excellent judge of art, would often to look at them when exposed for sale, and agree that the painter had a rare eye for, and was never wrong in his colour. Indeed, colour has ever been his strong point. Widgery had no instruction from any man, or any books. There was no art gallery in Exeter to instruct his eye. He went boldly out into the fields, and sat himself down with the colour that he gradually learned to select, and he painted what he saw, with nature his only master. The consequence is that he has followed no man. It is impossible to say that "Widgery is of the school of so-and-so," although at the present time all the young painters are copying him. He has a style quite peculiar to himself, a style in which he catches effects, portrays rural scenes and wild landscapes boldly, and with very little finish. At the present date he has practiced art for thirty years. He has painted over three thousand pictures, and has sold them all; indeed, they are generally sold before they are off his easel, and any left the dealers are ready to take immediately. He twice visited Italy and Switzerland, and for a time he painted glacier streams, and snowy mountains and views of Venice; but he soon returned to the scenery of his native country. He has painted the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, and is particularly happy in his delineation of wild seas dashing on rugged iron-bound coast; but Dartmoor is the chief of his labors, and in after years he will be chiefly remembered as pre-eminently the painter of Dartmoor. He is a correct and spirited painter of animals, and introduces them with good effect. His pictures are well composed, and he has the power of selecting picturesque bits, and of arranging his subject in a bold easy manner, that appears utterly unstudied. He possesses the ars celare artem to perfection his touch is remarkably light and free; his colour is entirely without crudity of heaviness; he never uses any blue but cobalt, and every variety of green and grey he makes with this, the lightest of colours. He mixes a little of the pigment with all his tints, and thus carries a softening atmospheric effect over the whole of the work.”
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Blue Dolphin Antiques
| Status: For Sale |
Reference#: an4313 |
| Condition:
very good |
Year:
1822-1893
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| Title:
Antique Watercolor Painting Gold Carved Frame |
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